"Even Judas" - Sermon for Maundy Thursday

Even Judas
Maundy Thursday (NL3)
March 28, 2013
Luke 22.1-27

It seems like Jesus can’t catch a break these last few days, not even during this last supper with his closest friends. It has been one conflict after another since he arrived triumphantly in Jerusalem as the coming king to the cheers of the crowds. The tension has increased and if the hatred of the religious leaders wasn’t enough to deal with, one of Jesus’ most trusted followers is plotting to betray him while the others are squabbling about who is the greatest. It reminds me of the arguments with my siblings about whose turn it was to wash the dishes, turning a nice meal into a catfight. I imagine Jesus was at least as exasperated about them as our parents were about us, no doubt more.

There has been much guesswork down through the millennia about Judas and his motives for betraying Jesus. Yet, as much as Luke tells us about Judas and what he does, Luke is strangely silent about Judas’ motives. We have no clue why he betrays Jesus. Was he disappointed because Jesus wasn’t turning out to be the kind of savior he thought he was? Was he in it for the money, as the gospel writer John hints? Or was there some other reason? We don’t know, but in a very real sense it doesn’t matter what Judas’ motives were. Commentator Greg Carey points out that attaching motives to Judas makes him irrelevant to us. If we knew why he did what he did, we could just dismiss him. Leaving Judas alone in that respect leaves Judas at the table, right along with the rest of us.

Carey also reminds us that Jesus spends a lot of time at meals in Luke’s gospel. Much of the time Jesus is either at a meal, on his way to a meal, or coming back from a meal. In fact, many of his parables involve meals or eating. We at Grace Lutheran can identify with that! The important thing to note is that Jesus shares meals with everybody: the outcast sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes, the rich, the poor, his closest friends and even his enemies. Here at his last supper, Jesus not only gathers with his clueless friends and his betrayer, he feeds them. Jesus feeds them with his very body and blood, his life force. Jesus feeds all of them, even Judas.

On more than one occasion I have been approached by someone who says something like this: “Pastor, you’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been to Communion lately. It’s because I’ve done some awful things and I just don’t feel worthy enough to commune.” What these folk have forgotten was that none of us deserves to be at Jesus’ table. None of us deserve to be fed with his forgiveness.

Before I became a pastor, I was president of a congregation in Northern Virginia near Washington DC. I present at a very contentious meeting with national church leaders and our church leadership about a building project we were finally going to undertake. We were going to build a sanctuary after worshipping many years in a glorified fellowship hall. After the meeting, there were some hurt feelings all the way around, most of which I don’t even remember. However, we did one thing right: we closed the meeting with worship and Holy Communion. That experience deflated the bruised egos and brought a new perspective to our work together. We were all fed and forgiven. I often wonder how it would have gone in our meeting had we started with Communion rather than ended with it.

Jesus says, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Jesus means a lot more than simple recalling a past event. Remembering actually makes Jesus present in a real and vital way. Also, to remember is to re-member, to be membered again, to be made members in community with one another, restored to wholeness. We don’t know what Jesus means by the woe that will be visited upon Judas. But we do know that, even if we can’t hold judgment and grace together, God can. Judgment often contains the makings of grace and grace tempers judgment. In the midst of the brokenness of our lives, the petty and not so petty squabbles, Jesus comes to feed us with forgiveness. He comes to re-member us for service to others, even Judas, even us. Amen.